IT roles by pay: Top 5
Plain and simple. What are the Top 5 best paid IT in finance jobs? Paul Thoma, managing director of specialist IT recruitment firm Garthorne Associates, fills in the blanks and tells you who's looking to hire.
1. Senior developer/team lead, derivatives-focused hedge fund
- 1-3 years: 90,000 base, 150,000 total comp
- 3-5 years: 100,000 base, 200,000 total comp
- 5+ years: 110,000 base, 300,000 total comp
2. Programme manager, FX eTrading
- 1-3 years: 90,000 base, 150,000 total comp
- 3-5 years: 100,000 base, 175,000 total comp
- 5+ years: 120,000 base, 250,000 total comp
3. Developer, proprietary trading
- 1-3 years: 80,000 base, 125,000 total comp
- 3-5 years: 100,000 base, 175,000 total comp
- 5+ years: 110,000 base, 250,000 total comp
4. Project manager, equity algorithmic trading
- 1-3 years: 90,000 base, 135,000 total comp
- 3-5 years: 105,000 base, 150,000 total comp
- 5+ years: 120,000 base, 225,000 total comp
5. Business analyst, structured credit derivatives
- 1-3 years: 80,000 base, 120,000 total comp
- 3-5 years: 90,000 base, 150,000 total comp
- 5+ years: 105,000 base, 200,000 total comp
So where are the jobs? "At the current time, as we move towards Q4, we're still seeing strong levels of recruitment from many of the top banks - European, US and Asian," says Thoma. "Companies like Deutsche, UBS, JPMorgan and Lehman are maintaining a strong appetite to capture outstanding candidates to facilitate their continued success."
Not surprisingly, the pay range shows that front-office business knowledge combined with cutting edge IT skills commands a premium. "The more senior you go and the more hands on technically you are, the more likely you'll be to achieve the optimum compensation levels," he says.
According to Thoma, Java now seems to be the most sought after development language, but C# is clawing its way up as many of the banks begin to utilise it more for back-end as well as front-end development.
